Flesh & Blood

by A. E. Dooland

  I was about to gently tease her about it, but my phone buzzed in my pocket. I guessed that Bree was pranking me so I could save her number, so I fished my phone out, glanced at it and started to say, “You know, if you want me to save your number, you’re going to have to turn on caller ID so I can—”

  Bree was staring blankly at me. The words died on my lips when I looked down at her phone: the screen was blank, she hadn’t turned it on yet.

  Fuck. I looked down at my own phone. “It’s Mum.”

  Bree actually smiled at my reaction, the traitor. “It’ll be fine, I promise.”

  I doubted that. “Sure it will,” I said dryly. “Well, it’s been nice knowing you.” She giggled as I took a deep breath and answered it.

  “Min! Min, you actually answered for once! What a nice surprise!” My mother, the master of backhanded compliments. “You know, I keep forgetting that you’re unemployed now, it’s been so many years that you told me to wait until you’re home in the evening to call you…”

  Of course, me being at work hadn’t actually stopped her calling me at all times of the day anyway. I didn’t point that out, though. It wasn’t worth correcting Mum, it upset her and in five years down the track she’d still be reminding me of that one time when I talked back to her as evidence that I was a bad daughter…

  The depth of surrender must have shown on my face, because Bree giggled and rubbed my arm.

  “Who’s that? Are you with someone? Where are you, is that traffic?”

  I replied in English. “I’m in Hyde Park with a friend,” I told her. “We’re about to have dinner,” and to pre-empt her twenty questions, I added, “Her name's Bree, yes, she’s white, but she’s baptised…” I looked at Bree for the answer.

  “Serbian Orthodox,” she primly recited.

  “…Orthodox,” I told Mum, conveniently leaving out that Bree was an atheist who never went to Church, as well as that she was 18, still at school, and that she had great breasts.

  Mum made a non-committal noise. “Does Henry like her?”

  What a question. I avoided it. “He cooked as both japchae a month or two ago and she loved it. Listen, it’s very loud here and I won’t be able to talk to you for very long. I wanted to know how Grandma is,” I lied, “is she doing better on her new medication?”

  Predictably, Mum launched into the latest news about Grandma, and while my eyes were rolling in my skull and I was making encouraging sounds so she stayed on the subject, Bree sat up and gave me an appraising look. That concerned me.

  “So, Min, why won’t Henry answer his phone?” At the mention of Henry, I snapped back to paying attention to Mum. “I called him and called him, is his phone broken? Thank goodness for your message this morning, I was so worried something had happened to you both, and on your birthday, too.”

  While I was quickly trying to figure out how to answer that, Bree threw a leg across my lap and straddled me with a cheeky grin. When I faux-glared at her, she smirked and sat heavily on me. Then, she looked surprised. “Oh! You’re wearing the…” she whispered, looking down between us at my crotch.

  “Min? Min? Are you there?”

  I winced. “Um, yes, sorry Mum, it’s a bit loud here,” I apologised, directing a stern glare at Bree. “Henry’s really busy on some big projects and he’s trying not to be distracted. Sorry if he’s not answering his phone. He’s too polite to tell you he’s busy.”

  Mum bought it. “Oh, of course he is. I’m sorry for distracting him, could you tell him sorry from me? I just read about a horrible car accident in Sydney and when you didn’t answer your phone I thought maybe you and Henry were in it…”

  While she was telling me about this supposed accident, Bree settled back across my lap and then pretended to rock back and forth and toss her hair like we were openly having sex in the park.

  I made a strangled noise and looked around us – it was probably getting a bit dark for anyone to see exactly what we were doing – but I grabbed a hold of her to stop her anyway. When I pointed a stern finger at her, she looked at it and then at me. I took it away from her before she could put it in her mouth.

  “Listen, Min,” there was something about Mum’s tone of voice that was sobering, “you’re 26 now, you’re not a child anymore, and I won't be around forever. I don’t want to always have to worry about what’s going to happen to you. I know Henry’s been thinking of proposing, and you need to find a way to convince him to do it. He’s very patient with you; too patient, I think. Most men would have left you a long time ago. You don’t treat him well and he deserves better.”

  Ouch. “I know.” I closed my eyes for a second and motioned for Bree to get off me. When she saw my expression, she did.

  “Did you open the present I sent you in front of him? I was hoping you’d open it in front of him. Perhaps you could leave it somewhere when you visit him, to let him know that you’re ready and he can ask? He’d be so happy, I think. I think he really wants to marry you. You’ve got to stop wasting that, Min.”

  He did really want to marry me, I thought, remembering that beautiful ring and the heartbreaking inscription on the inside of the box. And then I’d broken his heart.

  I switched to Korean. Bree didn’t need to hear this. “Thank you for the present,” I told her. “But I don’t know if he’s as ready as you think to marry me. In Australia, lots of people date for a very long time, and some of them never actually—”

  “—I know, Min, I used to live there, I know what it’s like. Look how many white people actually stay married, though; you shouldn’t take marriage lessons from them. I hope your Orthodox friends with their ‘You can get divorced any time you like’ Church aren’t giving you bad advice and that’s why you’re waiting too long.”

  “No, Mum. They’re not. It’s my fault.”

  She sighed. A silence stretched between us; all I could hear was the hum of traffic nearby. “Maybe I should come over there for a bit,” she said eventually. “Grandma would be sad, of course, but maybe you need a guiding hand about how to—”

  All the colour drained from my face. With every fibre of my being: no! Mum could not see me like this! “Mum, no, please, it’s okay,” I told her, forgetting to speak Korean. “Don’t leave Grandma when she’s so sick, I won’t make you do that. I’ll work something out.”

  “You’re my only daughter, Min. Your future is so important, and if it takes someone with wisdom and—”

  “—Mum, please don’t leave Grandma. I would feel so guilty. Please, I’ll do it by myself, I promise.”

  She made a disapproving noise and was silent for another few moments. Despite the fact I wasn’t the slightest bit religious, I felt like I wanted to pray she didn’t insist on coming. Please, I begged, please, please, please…

  “Well, alright,” she said after several agonising seconds of deliberation. “But if he hasn’t proposed before his birthday, I think I really need to come and help.”

  “I’m sure it will work out,” I told her, without the faintest fucking idea how it was possibly going to work out. “I’d better go to dinner. It’s lovely to talk to you.”

  “Don’t eat too much,” she told me. “Henry says nice things about not caring if you get fat, but you can’t take any chances. Goodbye, Min.” She hung up.

  I stared at my phone as the screen went dark.

  Fuck. What was I going to do? What the hell was I going to do?

  Bree cuddled up against my side and we lay there for a few minutes while I tried to figure out how on earth I was going to try and get out of this.

  “Is she coming?” she asked quietly when I didn’t say anything.

  I shook my head. “Not yet,” I said. “But if Henry doesn’t propose by July…”

  Bree thought about that. “Telling her about you is, like, totally out of the question, isn’t it?”

  I nodded slowly. “She wants to come and stay with me just to make sure Henry marries me. I don’t even know what she’d be like if I went, �
�Mum, I’m transgender, I’ve dumped Henry, and I’m dating a girl’.” I closed my eyes again. “Let’s just run away.”

  Bree laughed. It was an empty sound. “I am so there right now,” she told me. “Home’s, like, a tiny bit better at the moment because Andrej is working and so far he’s been giving his wages to Dad. But, like, it’s like the universe has gone, ‘Hey, Bree, things are way too easy for you right now! We’re going to fuck shit up!’, because school is just…” I felt warm breath through my hoodie as she exhaled. “Yeah.”

  I turned my head towards her. This was finally the right moment, wasn’t it? “Is that why you weren’t in class?”

  She exhaled, and then looked up at me. The answer was clear. “Are you angry I didn’t just tell you?”

  God, no. It was such a relief to be talking about it. “Not angry…”

  “Just worried?” When I smiled wryly at her, she giggled a couple of times. “Of course you were.” Then, she lay her head back in the crook of my arm. “Sorry. I’m not doing it because I’m, like, I don’t know, lazy or—”

  “Bree. I know.”

  Her eyes were veiled as she gazed across my torso, tracing the print on my hoodie with a finger. “Like, on Monday we were supposed to do this stuff with Excel in Maths, and Mr Preston was like, ‘Everyone take out your laptops or your tablets!’ and I don’t have my laptop anymore, do I? So when he was like, ‘Bree, where’s your device?’ I couldn’t just go, ‘Sorry, my brother pawned it and gambled the money’, so I just was like, ‘Hee hee, I guess I forgot to put it in my bag this morning, silly me!’ and then he wanted to see me after class.”

  I did not like where this was going, but I didn’t interrupt her.

  “Anyway, so I stayed back and he’s all like, ‘Bree, tell me about why you’re at this school’, and what do you even say to that? So I just said some polite crap and then he’s like, ‘I know there are some financial issues, and you never pay attention in class, and you hardly do the homework, so, Bree, why are you here?’ And then he went on this long rant about the reputation of the school and how all the other students are dedicated and hardworking, blah blah, and he’s like, ‘I don’t understand why you’re wasting this opportunity and not even trying, Bree.’ And, seriously, I couldn’t say anything, because where do I even start? Like, how the fuck am I supposed to try and learn Excel when I don’t even have a fucking computer? I can’t even do research assignments and type my essays and stuff because I don’t have one, and even if someone did let me borrow one, I don’t have the Internet at home. I can’t fucking concentrate with my parents stomping around the house, and there’s no food there, and the phone’s always ringing because of debt collectors, and it’s like… how do you even explain all that to someone who just looks at you and sees a dumb blonde schoolgirl who’s lazy and gets bad marks?” She paused for a moment and let that hang in the air before she continued. “And when I didn’t say anything, he’s like, ‘Or perhaps you should consider dropping down to vocational studies that are better suited to your abilities,’ which is basically like, ‘you’re too dumb to be here’. And so I was like, fuck this. Fuck everything. I’m not going to class, I’ll just go to the library and read stuff that’s actually relevant to my life in there, I don’t care. It’s not like I’d ever get into uni, anyway. None of it matters anyway because they’ll probably kick me out soon for not paying my fees, and I’ll never even finish my HSC.”

  My lips were pressed in a tight line for most of the time she’d been speaking. What a fucking bastard. How could he teach Bree for years and know there were ‘financial issues’ and not be more sensitive to the fact there was obviously more going on for her? “That was the man by the gate this morning, wasn’t it?” I may have sounded a little bit angry.

  Bree picked up on it. “Yeah, but don’t do anything, okay? Like, I mean it would be awesome if you could just totally punch him, but don’t.”

  The sentiment was certainly there, but I had a better idea. Fuck him, and fuck anyone who thought she was stupid, I thought. “Come on,” I said as I stood, shelving the unsolvable crap with Mum for now in favour of a problem I could actually do something about. I let Bree collect her phone, and then pulled her up and began to drag her out of Hyde Park.

  “Where are we going?” she asked, eyes wide.

  “To give you a fighting fucking chance of proving that prick wrong and getting your HSC after all,” I said, fluttering the button at the pedestrian crossing, and then towing Bree across it.

  “Okay…” she said, letting me. It wasn’t until we were standing outside the yellow windows of a JB Hi-Fi that she stopped in place and shook her head at me. “No, Min…” she said, trying to stop me from pulling her toward the sea of laptops on display. “No, you don’t work for Frost anymore, you don’t have much money, you can’t!”

  “I have nearly four grand,” I told her. “And Frost owes me something like seven or eight, maybe more, and that’ll come through soon. That’s plenty.”

  “Yeah, but you shouldn’t spend it on me!” she said, “Especially not because of stupid Andrej stealing everything, that’s so fucked. There’s no point anyway, he’ll just steal it and sell it and you’ll have wasted all that money!”

  “You can leave it at Sarah’s and just study there,” I told her. “Come on, it’s okay.”

  She actually looked really upset. “It’s not okay, Min!” she told me. People were starting to watch us. “It’s not okay! You’re going to totally waste all this money and I’m going to be kicked out anyway!”

  I took her face in my hands for a second. “Spending money on you is not a waste, Bree,” I told her firmly. “And you were right before. How are you supposed to try at school when you can’t even do the homework? Well, soon you’ll be able to.”

  She didn’t say anything to that—I think she was trying not to cry—and she let me take her into the store. The clerk asked her some questions to try and figure out what she needed, and she answered them mechanically, looking completely spun.

  In the end, we left the store with a convertible tablet that had a solid and colourful keyboard you could attach to it. Bree chose a pastel purple one that sparkled in the light, and she cradled the box all the way to the car.

  We didn’t end up staying in the city for dinner, we got drive-thru on the way home instead. Bree ate it quietly in the passenger seat, hugging her two packages to her chest.

  When we got back, poor Sarah hadn’t made it home yet, but Rob was watching footy and hollered a hello to us from the living room as we walked down the hall. I called back to him as I let Bree into my bedroom. She sat down on the bed with her two boxes, looking down at them.

  Trying not to smile too much, I went over to my suitcase and took out a couple more boxes. “I think I mentioned presents…”

  Her face crumpled. “No!” she said, but laughed miserably as she set aside the tablet and her phone to see what I had for her.

  Honestly, when I was up in Broome, I had thought I’d secretly enjoy the opportunity to have some time to myself, and I did at first. After a few days, though, I started finding myself in gift shops holding plush pink dugongs, named shot glasses, and other cute things and thinking to myself, ‘Bree would love this!’, and since I didn’t have a reason not to buy her things, out came my credit card…

  The plush pink dugong was a little over the top, and she laughed at it, hugged it, and put it with the laptop and the phone. The other bits and pieces, she liked, too.

  It was when she got to the final present which was in a small oblong gift box that she paused. It was clearly jewellery. “I hope it’s not expensive,” she told me, sounding stern.

  I didn’t say anything, I just grinned and motioned for her to open it. She did, looking really worried about what was inside. As she lifted it out of the box I watched her face closely, trying to determine if she loved it or hated it, because it wasn’t very colourful like the stuff she normally liked.

  It was a sand-coloured pearl
on a thin gold chain, simple and long enough for her to hide inside her school shirt if she kept the buttons done up.

  “There are pearls everywhere in Broome so I went on this pearl tour,” I said, explaining as I helped her put it on. “And after I’d learnt all about pearls, I had a really pathetically corny reason for getting this for you. On reflection, it seems a bit stupid, so…” I held the pearl up beside her hair; it was the same colour. “Let’s just pretend that’s why I bought it for you.”

  When I dropped it back against her skin, she looked up at me. “Tell me the corny reason,” she said quietly. “I don’t care if it’s really stupid.”

  “It’s pretty damn corny,” I warned her, showing her how she could hide the pearl with her buttons closed. She opened them again so she could admire it nested in her cleavage. “The guide was saying that there are millions of pearls farmed every year, millions, and that no two pearls are the same. They’re all asymmetrical, and imperfect, and not quite circular,” I told her. “And despite these imperfections, every single one of those millions of pearls is valuable and beautiful because it’s unique. And some lucky person is going to pick up that imperfect pearl and hold it in their palm and realise it’s the most beautiful thing they’ve ever seen, and then they’re going to love it, and treasure it, and proudly wear it so that everyone can see just how beautiful it is.”

  Her eyes filled with tears as I spoke and she pulled me into a desperate hug. I let her put her arms around me as she mumbled thanks into my hoodie and didn’t emerge for a few minutes. I could feel the material was wet.

  When she finally pulled back, her eyes were red but she was smiling. “You make me feel so good about myself,” she told me, looking down at the pearl. “Like, everything's shit right now, but you always make me feel like it might end up being okay, after all.”